PRODUCTIONS

SOLI — BIS / LA BETE

Outline

BIS a solo for Truus Bronkhorst

LA BETE a solo for Joke Emmers

SOLI are two solo’s each performed by a characteristic female performer.

BIS is a supported solo for 62 year old choreographer and dancer Truus Bronkhorst. LA BETE is a solo for 23 year old actress Joke Emmers, who just graduated at the acting school Herman Teirlinck in Antwerp.

Two women, one with a history, and one for who it all begins, one who had allready a long career, one a talent for the futur.

Both the solo’s research the use of voice on stage, and are performances that handle time, minimalism and the (anti-)climax.

Both solo’s mirror and complement each other.
They are both clear triptych structures.
Implosive vs explosive, young vs old, dramatic vs tragicomic.
The two solo’s form a web where in the same formal aspects and inspirations are interwoven, but with a very different outcome.

BIS a solo for Truus Bronkhorst

Truus Bronkhorst made name in the 80’s through her eccentric and esthetic solo works. These old works were the main inspiration for the creation of BIS.

Young choreographer Jan Martens (1984) made Bis with and for 62 year old Truus Bronkhorst. A solo about carrying on and never giving up. An encore for all fans and all haters. An extraction of pain loss and fear. Minimalism peeled off.
For the first time in a long while, Truus Bronkhorst performs in a choreography by someone else. Truus Bronkhorst’s return to stages in the Netherlands as a dancer was marked by Seule. And now Jan Martens created a solo for her. Two worlds come together. There are a lot of differences, but they also share a desire to show a merciless form of humanity on stage. And this is what BIS is.

The press has written of Seule by Truus Bronkhorst: “If she proves one thing, it is that at the age of sixty she is still a performer per se.” NRC Handelsblad
“A dancer who dances on the edge, struggles for her art, and is afraid of being forgotten. And she is back.' Trouw

LA BETE a solo for Joke Emmers

Invited by the Centre de Développement Chorégraphique du Val-de Marne,
Jan Martens creates a new solo for Flemish actress Joke Emmers.
LA BETE is a work about the restless beast inside.
A rhythmical production that links voice, text and movement.

A young woman fills the emptiness because she can’t stand it. A woman walking on and off, creating sound, creating an image to avoid the silence.
LA BETE is the execution of an inner monologue:
“don’t stop moving,
don’t stop talking,
keep on going,
let’s go on.
Again and again.”
It is a dramatic and by times hilarious portrait of a struggling woman using all her force to avoid the nothingness.